Carriage House

Eads Avenue, until about 1912, there were no cars in La Jolla, horse-drawn carriages and wagons being the transportation of the early days. At the time, Ellen Browning Scripps owned an extensive tract of property along the La Jolla coastline that included her first Victorian-style home (Moulton Villa), a lathe house and this carriage house is still on its original Eads Avenue site that housed her horse-drawn carriages. A 1915 arson fire destroyed Moulton Villa and much of Scripps' surrounding structures but the small Carriage House escaped untouched.

With the age of the automobile approaching, the Carriage House began to accommodate Scripps' stylish new Pierce Arrow touring car, driven around town by chauffeur Fred Higgins. British by birth, Higgins remained Scripps' chauffeur until her death in 1932. It was widely reported that he lived in the back room of the Carriage House for some years, although in an oral interview years later he gave his address as 7866 Eads Avenue, another Scripps'-owned cottage farther down the street and no longer in existence.

The Carriage House is characteristic of the many small buildings constructed in La Jolla in the early 1900s, featuring single-wall construction with wood siding finishing the main façade. A high-pitched roof and garage entry doors allowed large carriages to come and go with ease. The rear of the structure contains a series of small partitions that may have been used as living quarters at some time. One window repeats the small triangular-topped panes also found in Wisteria Cottage.